The crafts one by one

The cook: the game's own dishes

The cook (cooking) makes every cooked, smoked and dried dish of the game - 105 recipes at any tavern's kitchen, from a cooked onion to a boar tenderloin. The hunt's venison, boar meat and hare and the fishers' catch come from your sack (the game's own raw pieces in your pack count too: a deer's rump counts as venison). Every tavern kitchen sells the rest raw: apple, beef, beef tenderloin, beet, boletus edulis, cabbage, carrot, cheese and more. Smoking also takes a log.

The game's own fires count too: a dish you cook or smoke at a fire in the world is yours if your cooking has reached its level, and it trains the craft as the kitchen would. Below that level it spoils and is taken back. What dries on its own over time - herbs, fruit, meat - is always yours.

Potions in dishes and drinks

At a kitchen or a brewing vat the craft window has an optional potion slot: click it to see the potions in your pack, with their icons and how many you carry, and pick one to stir in. Each portion takes one potion (a brew of four beers takes four), so the batch is held to the potions you carry, and they are taken with the goods when the work is done. The dish or drink comes out under its own name with the potion's ("Cooked perch (infused: Marigold decoction)"): eaten or drunk, it feeds or refreshes as usual and gives the potion's full effect besides, as drinking the potion would. Every potion still found in the realm works; the ones it no longer brews (Lethean Water, the banned potions, the poisons) cannot be stirred in. Infused portions do not stack in the pack. A dose of contraband can be stirred in the same way: the dish or drink comes out "(laced)" and is contraband itself - marked in the pack, found and seized at an inspection like a flask - and gives the drug's effect besides its own. Leave the slot empty for a plain dish.

The goldsmith and the brewer

The goldsmith (jewelling) makes every wearable ring, brooch and necklace in the game. Silver ore is first refined at the bench into fine silver (one ore and one coal make two). Plain pieces take fine silver and coal, golden ones the miners' gold ore (a rare find in the mines, or bought at an auction house), and the finest pieces of levels 8 to 10 a little of the smith's steel for their clasps and settings. The bench is at the Kuttenberg mint, next to a goldsmith who sells the plainest pieces.

The brewer (brewing) works the brewing vat of any tavern: plain beer and cheap wine first, then Troskowitz, Jitschine, Aujezd, Turnau and wedding beers, the wines of the land, mead, rose hip wine and, at the top, plum schnapps. Its hops, malt, grapes and plums come from the herbalists, its honey from the woodcutters - at the auction house or from their sacks. Each brew makes several drinks, with the game's own effects.

The forge: the game's own smithing

Every one of the game's 60 smithing recipes is at the forge, with the game's own ingredients - the ingots, guards, pommels and skins its anvil asks for, in the same numbers - plus some coal, timber, hides, steel, copper, silver or gold. A blade's level and cost depend on how hard it hits, not on its price: the strongest blades of each kind are at levels 9 and 10 and cost the most, while a weak one is cheap and early, however famous. The ingots and parts are the game's own items: the crafts make them, you carry them in your pack (an ingot weighs about a kilo), and the bench counts them there. Chests and tables in the land no longer contain them, and no merchant sells them.

The miners' copper ore (a find of the Kuttenberg veins) is smelted into the game's copper. The smith's steel is the game's Steel: bars in your sack and in your pack both count. Fastening material, coin pommels and scrap are made several at a time.

Four wares that nobody in the land can make come from far away: Exotic wood (52 gr.), Dogfish skin (90 gr.), Tincal (26 gr.), Jasper (54 gr.). Only the importer south of the Kuttenberg market sells them, two at a time. The game's finest blades (the Calvaria axe, the Lion's roar kilij, St. George's sword, the Lingua belli longsword ...) need them.

Relics. Some of the game's legends were broken long ago: Broken Excalibur, Broken Durandal, Weapon stub, Dragon claw, Broken guild longsword, Broken axe, Magdalena's broken axe. None lies around in the land: one turns up, very rarely, in the baggage of a deserter captain of difficulty 8 and up, or at a staff event - never more than three a week in the whole realm, and never a second one for the same character within a month. A master smith (level 10) can reforge Dragon fang Axe and Longsword of the Four Evangelists only from their relics. Adorned axe is cheaper from the relic, or dearer as a faithful replica without it. Henry's sword is reforged from the sword itself. Durendal, Excalibur, Guild Longsword, Magdalena's axe and Reforged Radzig Kobyla's sword are quest items the game hides and never reports: no smith makes them, and their relics are kept as trophies. The game's smaller quest pieces - a holy nail, a found horseshoe, a commemorative coin, charcoal water, a hanged man's noose, a ghostly horseshoe - are made by the crafts (see Every recipe).

Horseshoes are made by the smith too; the saddlers sell only the two plainest.

The game's own anvil is a second forge, just as the alchemy table is a second apothecary's bench. Its recipe book holds exactly the blades and horseshoes your smithing level unlocks, and each new level adds more. Forge one there (the anvil takes the ingots, guards, pommels and skins from your pack) and you keep it if your smithing has reached its level: it trains the craft like the forge's bench and costs the same coin for coal, timber and tools. If you forge one above your level, it is taken back. From level 5 a blade there takes another craft's part from your sack as at the bench (the tailor's leather for the grip), and from level 8 the rare finds too (silver nuggets, meteoric iron): the anvil itself never asks for them, so have them in your sack before you start, or the anvil's work is taken back. The craft window says what each anvil recipe takes from the sack, and the chat reminds you when your smithing opens such recipes. What you forge there comes out at 100%, as at the bench, whatever the anvil's minigame made of it. Four pieces are not in its book: Rikonaris' sabre, the protective axe, the executioner's sword and the iron crankshaft. They are quest items the game hides and never reports, so neither the anvil nor the forge's bench makes them.

The alchemist: two benches, one craft

The alchemist (alchemy) brews every potion, perfume and oil in the game's own alchemy (but its poisons) - 27 recipes, each in its qualities (weak, plain, strong, Henry's), 82 recipes in all with the bandages. The recipes are the game's own: the same herbs in the same amounts. There are two ways to brew, and both count the same:

• At an apothecary's bench (an apothecary's shop or an infirmary): F2 > Work > Crafts, pick the potion and stand still a few seconds, as for any craft.
• At the game's own alchemy table, with its cauldron, mortar and still: follow the recipe in the game's book. Your book holds exactly the recipes your alchemy level unlocks, and each new level adds more. What you brew there is yours if your alchemy has reached the recipe's level, and it trains your alchemy like the bench (for the same small fee for the base and the fire). If you brew one above your level, the potion is taken back. A recipe of level 8 to 10 takes its rare finds (an ancient mandrake, a rock crystal, a royal antler) from your sack there as at the bench: have them before you brew, or the potion is taken back. The craft window says which.

Each potion's weak quality unlocks at its recipe's level, and each better quality one level later: the chamomile and digestive decoctions and the saviour schnapps from level 1, Henry's St. Roch's potion and the mandrake decoction at level 10. Nettles, sage, chamomile, belladonna, mandrake and boar tusks come from the herbalists and the hunt (your sack and the herbs in your pack both count). The other herbs - marigold, mint, wormwood, St John's wort, valerian, comfrey, poppy, eyebright, dandelion, henbane, herb Paris, feverfew, ginger, elderberry - you pick in the meadows and woods (fresh or dried, both work), and the apothecaries sell them, along with charcoal, sulphur, saltpetre and the rest. A potion costs a fifth to a quarter of its worth to brew, herbs and fee included: a strong marigold decoction comes to about 9 groschen.